They don’t call it the city of light for noth­ing.

Cour­tesy of the BBC, this video fea­tures Bri­an Cox, a par­ti­cle physi­cist and ex D:Ream key­board play­er, who trav­els across the US, fir­ing lasers at the moon and going wild in the Ari­zona desert, all in order to under­stand the deep secrets of grav­i­ty — some­thing that nei­ther New­ton nor Ein­stein ful­ly under­stood. It’s in grav­i­ty, Cox thinks, that we can find the mean­ing and log­ic of the Uni­verse.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• Ein­stein and the Mind of God
• Einstein’s E = mc2 Explained
• Sci­ence Pod­cast Col­lec­tion

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Watch the work of a satir­i­cal illus­tra­tor in action over at The New York­er.

It’s been a con­stant lament that YouTube offers its users scant lit­tle intel­lec­tu­al con­tent. And that con­tent is itself hard to find. Just vis­it YouTube’s so-called Edu­ca­tion Sec­tion, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find any­thing actu­al­ly edu­ca­tion­al. But the good news is that we’re see­ing some recent signs of intel­li­gent life at YouTube. The video ser­vice hosts an increas­ing num­ber of intel­lec­tu­al­ly redeemable video col­lec­tions. And so we fig­ured why not do some heavy lift­ing and bring a few your way. If YouTube won’t make them easy to find, then we will. (By the way, I first post­ed this right between Christ­mas and New Years, when every­one was tuned out. So it seemed worth post­ing again.)

1.) UC Berke­ley: We have men­tioned this col­lec­tion before, but we might as well men­tion it again. UC Berke­ley launched in Octo­ber a YouTube chan­nel that con­tains over 300 hours of aca­d­e­m­ic pro­gram­ming. And, most notably, you’ll find here a series of uni­ver­si­ty cours­es that can be watched in their entire­ty (for free). It’s a deep col­lec­tion worth start­ing with.

2.) @GoogleTalks: Many big names end up speak­ing at Google. That includes polit­i­cal fig­ures and cul­tur­al fig­ures such as Paul Krug­man, Steven Pinker, Joseph Stieglitz, Jonathan Lethem and more. Since Google owns YouTube, it’s good to see that they’re mak­ing an effort to record these talks and raise the intel­lec­tu­al bar on GooTube just a bit. Have a look.

3.) The Nobel Prize: TheNo­bel­Prize chan­nel presents cur­rent and past Nobel Lau­re­ates — cour­tesy of Nobelprize.org, the offi­cial web site of the Nobel Foun­da­tion. The col­lec­tion fea­tures offi­cial Nobel Prize Lec­tures and also more casu­al pre­sen­ta­tions. It looks like talks by the 2007 win­ners are being added slow­ly.

4.) TED Talks: Every year, a thou­sand “thought-lead­ers, movers and shak­ers” get togeth­er at a four-day con­fer­ence called TED (which is short for Tech­nol­o­gy, Enter­tain­ment and Design). In recent years, the list of speak­ers has ranged from Sergey Brin and Lar­ry Page to Bill Gates, to Her­bie Han­cock and Peter Gabriel, to Frank Gehry, to Al Gore and Bill Clin­ton. In this col­lec­tion, you’ll find var­i­ous talks pre­sent­ed at the con­fer­ence. They usu­al­ly run about 20 min­utes.

5.) FORA.tv: In case you don’t know about it, FORA.tv is a web ser­vice that hosts videos fea­tur­ing impor­tant thinkers grap­pling with con­tem­po­rary cul­tur­al, social and polit­i­cal ques­tions. It’s like YouTube, but always intel­li­gent. You can find extend­ed videos on FORA’s site, and a decent sam­pling of their con­tent on YouTube.

6.) Philoso­phers and The­o­rists: The Euro­pean Grad­u­ate School (or EGS) hosts a video col­lec­tion on YouTube that includes talks by some very impor­tant theorists/philosophers of the past gen­er­a­tion — for exam­ple, Jacques Der­ri­da and Jean Bau­drillard. There are also some film­mak­ers mixed in — take for exam­ple, Peter Green­away and John Waters.

7.) Pulitzer Cen­ter on Cri­sis Report­ing: This chan­nel pro­motes cov­er­age of inter­na­tion­al affairs, “focus­ing on top­ics that have been under-report­ed, mis-report­ed — or not report­ed at all.” Most of these videos were fea­tured on the pub­lic tele­vi­sion pro­gram “For­eign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria.”

8.) BBC World­wide: The lead­ing British broad­cast­er is now live on YouTube, and there’s some good con­tent in the mix, although it won’t leap off of the home­page. The trick is to look at their playlist where you will find more edu­ca­tion­al pieces of video: doc­u­men­taries, sci­ence, dra­ma, trav­el, and more. The notable down­side is that the videos typ­i­cal­ly fall with­in YouTube’s cus­tom­ary 10 minute video lim­it. (Many oth­ers cit­ed here run longer.) Too bad more could­n’t have been done with this oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Oth­er smart media prop­er­ties that have opt­ed for the sound­bite strat­e­gy here include Nation­al Geo­graph­ic and PBS.

9.) UChan­nel: For­mer­ly called the Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nel, this video ser­vice presents talks on international/political affairs from aca­d­e­m­ic insti­tu­tions all over the world. It’s spear­head­ed by Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, and you can find an even more exten­sive video col­lec­tion on their web site.

10.) Oth­er Uni­ver­si­ty Chan­nels on YouTube: UC Berke­ley launched the biggest chan­nel on YouTube, but there are some oth­ers out there. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, find­ing them is some­thing of a crap­shoot. We’ve man­aged, how­ev­er, to pull togeth­er a good list of ten. See 10 Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lec­tions on YouTube

Bonus: We cob­bled togeth­er our own playlist of smart YouTube videos that will grow over time. Have a look.

In putting togeth­er this list, one thing became clear: YouTube has enough qual­i­ty con­tent to keep you busy, and there’s clear­ly more that I don’t know about (again, because they don’t make it easy to find). If you want to add oth­er good YouTube col­lec­tions to our list, please list them in the com­ments and I can add them selec­tive­ly to the list.

Want more smart media? Check out our big list of free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es avail­able via pod­cast.

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In one of our recent pieces, we high­light­ed a video that fea­tured law pro­fes­sor Cass Sun­stein inter­pret­ing the sec­ond amend­ment and ques­tion­ing whether it con­ferred the right to bear arms. In response, one of our read­ers offered this com­ment:

“Reeeeeal­ly good talk. My friend and I sat down to watch it, and before we start­ed, we laid out our posi­tions, basi­cal­ly one on each side of the debate. Sun­stein pro­ceeds to explain how we’re both wrong. Awe­some.”

I men­tion this sim­ply because it’s great to see the media (videos/podcasts) fea­tured here being used in this way. It’s great to see read­ers real­ly engag­ing with the mate­r­i­al and allow­ing it to shape their views. It’s the ulti­mate com­pli­ment in some ways. Thanks Ben.

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This counts as sci­ence, right?

Also see 18 Stun­ning Bridges From Around The World via Metafil­ter.

Check them out here.

via Life­hack­er

Below, we’ve listed some links that will hopefully pique your interest. Some were sent in by readers. Many thanks for them (and feel free to send good stuff our way. Contact us here.)

* How Google Earth Unearths Ancient Cities: Yes, Google is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing even archae­ol­o­gy.

* Nor­man Mail­er Archive Opens: It took the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas two years to orga­nize 1,000 box­es of let­ters and unpub­lished man­u­scripts writ­ten by Nor­man Mail­er. And it’s now ready, just a short two months after the author’s death. Among oth­er things, the archive hous­es cor­re­spon­dence that shows a warmer side of a writer often known for his surli­ness.

* 2007 Dar­win Awards Announced: Here’s a lit­tle dark humor. The Dar­win Awards, which “com­mem­o­rate those who improve our gene pool by remov­ing them­selves from it,” has released its awards for 2007. You can find some of the “hon­or­able men­tions” here.

* Islam, the West and the Bhut­to Lega­cy: Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Benazir Bhut­to, FORA.tv has assem­bled a video chan­nel “built around three pub­lic talks she gave in the year before her recent return to Pak­istan. Fif­teen pro­grams relat­ing to Pak­istan, Islam and approach­es to extrem­ism are now there, more will be added.”

* Clas­sic Film Clips: Over on YouTube, one of our read­ers has assem­bled a video col­lec­tion that fea­tures seg­ments from many clas­sic films — Dr. Strangelove, Metrop­o­lis, etc. It nice­ly com­ple­ments our own col­lec­tion, to which you might want to sub­scribe.

* Lost Star Wars Intro: Here’s the lost intro that mer­ci­ful­ly nev­er made it into the final film.

* Print Pub­lic Domain Books on Paper: This inter­me­di­ary ser­vice makes it easy to print paper copies of free pub­lic domain books found on the inter­net. The books are free; the print­ing is not. But it nets out well over­all. Via Red­Fer­ret

*  Best Online Doc­u­men­taries: Title is fair­ly self-explana­to­ry.

*  Sir Edmund Hillary: A Life in Pic­tures — From Nation­al Geo­graph­ic.

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